the Democratic Deficit in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (pt1)

I think voting is essential. It is part of our responsibility in a democratic society. Sadly we so often seem to get the government that we deserve. Our voting system really doesn't help.

Yesterday my younger sproggling asked me about the general election, as she'd been doing some research in preparation for Hustings and school's mock election. As we started to discuss some of the issues grabbing attention, I started to reflect on the dearth of involvement that I feel with the process this time around, and my voting quandary tomorrow.

At the last General Election I took some tests, to see if I had my own "implicit bias" playing a factor in how I would usually vote. It was interesting to see how my perceived values scored against party policies. For almost all of my life (going back to post-Falklands hustings in Junior school!) I've felt my vote has been, numerically, irrelevant. Under first-past-the-post it is pretty much a two party state in much of the UK. Locally we might not even get the two. I once tactically lent my vote to Plaid Cymru to ensure we didn't sponsor yet another Labour donkey in Westminster, a Conservative was at least a remote possibility.

I've written to my current MP, Jonathan Edwards, twice. In 2015 I invited him to attend the debate on Epilepsy in Parliament. Epilepsy directly affects around 600,000 people in UK, without considering their carers and wider family. I appreciate that the invite was quite short notice and he had prior electioneering duties in the constituency, but Mr Edwards also said in his reply that Healthcare is a devolved issue in Wales. So it came as quite a surprise to find "local needs...health services" feature on the front page of his militiaristic Tarian Cymru/Defending Wales pamphlet. In the centre he talks of "expanding health services" and in the closing passage has a hook of "a vote for...our NHS".

As the current post-holder, Mr Edwards has the advantage that the electorate can base their choice on his prior performance. This contradiction jars with me, as he's currently electioneering on issues that he previously said were devolved. Have we paid him to undertake work he wasn't obliged to? Or, if we take the broader view that Parliamentarians serve their constituents and the whole of the UK, have we paid him not to do the work which he should have done? This nuance of the West Lothian question needs to be resolved swiftly in the coming years. Developing effective drugs to treat and control epilepsy is too big a job to fragment into walled gardens and isolated silos.

[A bonus point to the reader for spotting that we've also paid yet another tier in Tiger Bay at the same time - I'll save that for my very own league table in pt2].

Mr Edwards's remark in the flyer that "Scotland is looking after its own interests" seems somewhat harsh too. I will give him credit for declaring ahead-of-time that "the Conservatives will form the next Government". That's pretty a bold prediction, unless he's trying to kill voter turnout. Plaid Cymru were also pretty efficient getting their leaflet delivered a week ahead of the other parties. I was also pleased to be acknowledged as lead voter as his personalised mailshot landed many days ahead of the same to other voters in our household. "Mysognists of the world unite" might not be the most PC campaign slogan, have I stumbled on implicit bias in Wind Street? 

I wasn't impressed with the Conservative glossy when it finally arrived along with the Labour, UKIP & Liberal Democrat ones. To be fair, I probably wouldn't have been impressed even if it had come with a free iced doughnut from my favourite doughnuttery. But seriously, who chops "logs"? I've always chopped wood! And that axe, it was medieval! Anyone who's banged through more than twenty or thirty tonnes in their formative years will have a decent splitting axe with pre-sprung wedges to hand. Would I really vote for such a dinosaur who can't even use 20th century technology? He'll be looking for people who "understand the necessary hashtags" to hold his hand next.

UKIP's grip on geography continued to amuse. Historically they've struggled to orientate which side Hamilton Hall in Hullavington (Wiltshire) is of the Severn. They gave a Llanelli postcode for Llandybie in the one piece of literature they could muster for the household. Schoolboy errors in the legal imprint were icing on the proverbial missing doughnut in this case.

Labour's Darkin was damaged through guilt-by-association even before his flyer arrived. Its not just Labour's track record of orchestrating the financial crisis on the world stage - the recent sale of Lloyds bank was a timely reminder of just how badly Brown/Blair steered the ship, raiding our gold reserves too and getting so little for them. I was in China as news of the Lehman Brothers collapse broke, and the ripple effect has been profound. At a county level we have paid through the nose with the Labour initiated PFI programme for the unaffordable police station in Ammanford, and saw a spineless Labour led coalition in County Hall go on to unlawfully indemnify legal action in an attempt to silence a critic (who's performed a vital public service of trying to bring some transparency to dubious workings in Carmarthenshire County Council).  However, it was the shared service address that really leapt out. Anthony Jones was the Chair of the planning committee who told me that in order to remain impartial he was unable to represent the views of his electorate, who were overwhelmingly against an inappropriately located development. 

I was pleased to see a familiar face in Lesley Prosser's flyer, having enjoyed a very nice Sunday lunch with her (and her late husband) some twenty years ago. I understand she's come from a standing start, and was even more impressed when I looked up the recent local election figures and saw she'd come an admirable second, ahead of the well financed Plaid candidate and their well oiled party machinery. I do hope liberal principles at HQ give more support to freshers in future years - Facebook as primary campaign platform doesn't gel with my impression of open, transparent and accountable liberal values. Given the weak and wobbly opportunism of Mrs May's snap election, I'll cut them some slack this time around. I fear the duopoly bias in the voting system will compound the democratic deficit and hit Lesley particularly hard.

I'd hoped to hear from all the candidates on an even platform at the Hustings in Ammanford. Whilst I sympathised with those mourning Rhodri Morgan's sudden death, "postponing" an event geared to involve people and draw them into the political process seemed more disrepectful to a man who was known for engaging people in politics. Y Cneifiwr's Llandeilo Hustings report gave a glimpse of a free exchange of thoughts. Ammanford's event might have been equally as revealing - I wasn't the only one to arrive in the car park that evening who'd prepared some questions to size up the candidates.

As I  muse over my postal voting slip, with barely 20 hours left to deliver it safely to a ballot box, I've narrowed down the field but I still feel short changed.